Crime Stoppers: Gunning down grandpa

Pictures of another life. They help tell the story of Everette Crosley. In fact, they are all that’s left now. There will be no next chapter. His ex-wife, his daughter, his grandson, they all miss him now, because somebody decided to take his life.

It is the early morning hours of December 13, 2011. "Coming down Gus Young, comes to the corner of North 37th and Gus Young, cutting through to his house here and at some point in this grass parking lot, somebody shot him," says Detective Scott Blake with the Baton Rouge Police Department.

He kept walking after he was shot, but he didn’t make it very far. Collapsing right in front of the abandoned house where he had been staying.

His ex-wife, Pamela Vessell, remembers getting a call from their daughter.

"All I can remember is hearing her screaming, 'momma you need to get here.' I said ‘What's the matter Tia?’ She said ‘My daddy's dead!’"

Detectives know Crosley had just finished working at a friend's house and was coming from a convenience store down the road. What they don't know is who would walk up next to him and start shooting. Whoever did it took away a grandfather from a little boy.

In fact, they had just gotten together a few days before. "We took him over there and he just paraded him up and down the street," remembers Vessell. "Italked with someone over there and they said he's really getting it together. He said he would and he is."

Just trying to get better, for his grandson.

So where are the answers almost four years later? Unfortunately, like we've seen so many times before, there isn’t much community involvement.

"The sad part is nobody wants to do anything until it happens to them," says Vessell. She says she knows the police can't do it alone, knows it all starts in the home. In fact, she has a plea for many us.

"Parents, parents, parents, know where your children are."

Her child lost a father, a man her grandchild will never get to know. And all those changes he was making, nobody will ever get to see the end result.

To report information on this crime, or any crime, contact Crime Stoppers at 225-344-7867.